FIFTY-ONE #2
The Elite Guards of Greythorne hold the inner wall, fighting in disciplined ranks with shields locked and blades stained with both human blood and the oily black ichor of the creatures they face.
Channelers and wielders hold the rear, hurling bursts of flame and stone from behind hastily raised barriers. Others fight with nothing but steel and desperation.
Bodies litter the courtyard.
Flames consume what they can reach.
And rising from the center of the shattered courtyard is a hulking, monstrous silhouette.
A Gorganthe.
My heart stutters, fear flashing through the bond with Calryx.
I know that shape. I’ve faced one before. Or at least, it felt that way.
Valen conjured one during the training trials, an illusion built from shadow and memory, designed to test my fear. I fought it and came away feeling as though I had barely survived.
But that creature wasn’t real. This one is.
The Gorganthe moves like a living nightmare, stone-skinned and wrapped in shadow, its eyes burning with unnatural light. Every step crushes bodies and battlements beneath its feet. Its roar rattles the walls of the keep.
“Calryx—”
“I see it.”
The formation drops lower, slicing through the wind with precision, wings casting vast shadows across the fields below. The battlefield sharpens into focus—the shattered walls of Greythorne Keep, the chaos of fire and blood, the roar of dragons filling the air.
Then everything changes.
A fog rolls in.
Fast enough to raise every instinct I have.
It swallows the edges of the battlefield like a living thing, curling upward from the ruined southern gate, creeping along the ridge line, and spilling into the sky around us. At first it looks like smoke, but there is something wrong about it.
The temperature drops. The cold strikes with the force of winter, sharp and bone-deep.
Calryx growls beneath her breath. “This isn’t right.”
“Thane,” I say through the bond, eyes straining against the gray. “This isn’t normal fog. It’s shadow magics.”
To my right, I feel him more than see him. Xaroth’s vast wings slow just enough to hold position, and Thane’s presence sharpens through the bond.
“Yes.” His certainty is immediate. “There must be a commander on the ground. Maybe more.”
A beat passes.
“Amara, can you clear it?”
I reach for the air around us. The fog clings like wet cloth, heavy and unnatural. This feels suffocating.
But I have to try.
“I think I can.”
My eyes drift closed, trusting Calryx to see for both of us.
Focus.
Valen’s voice whispers in memory.
The Element is already there. You don’t force it. You invite it.
I draw in a measured breath and still my mind.
Even here, in the middle of battle, with the wind roaring in my ears and Calryx’s wings driving us through the sky above a battlefield consumed by war, I search for stillness.
For balance.
Then I reach for the wind.
Not just around me, but within me. Through Calryx. Through the sky. Through every current twisting across the battlefield below.
The bond between us steadies, a quiet reassurance that she is there.
I stretch out my hands. Open my fingers. And call.
At first, the fog resists.
It curls tighter, thick and stubborn. The shadow magics woven through it fights back, clinging to itself, refusing to yield. It snarls like a feral beast cornered, lashing out in every direction.
I grit my teeth and push harder.
It thrashes against the wind I’ve summoned, claws of shadow raking through the currents as though trying to consume them.
Sweat beads at my temple. The effort burns through me, raw and electric. Elemental magics surges inside me, rising faster and faster as I force more wind into the spell.
Wind roars through my veins. Fire flickers beneath my skin. Earth anchors me. Water flows with every breath. They are all there, answering, fighting beside me.
I hear Thane in my mind.
“Amara?”
His voice is threaded with concern. He senses the battle raging inside me, the Commander’s magics crashing against mine, trying to consume my magics.
Calryx’s irritation flares through our bond.
“Trust her.”
Thane can’t hear her. The words are meant only for me, my dragon giving voice to the frustration simmering beneath her unwavering certainty. To Calryx, there is no reason for doubt or hesitation. This is what I was born for.
Xaroth senses the change in her. He turns his head toward us and lets out a soft grumble, a quiet reminder that patience has its place.
But I don’t answer either of them. I can’t.
Because I am the storm.
I am the wind.
I am the fire, the pulse, the rising breath.
I am all of it.
Calryx roars beneath me, the sound tearing through the sky like thunder. Her magics surge through the bond between us, ancient and alive, weaving itself into mine and driving it higher.
The fog presses in, thick as stone and heavy as a mountain. Lifting it feels impossible.
So I reach deeper, drawing more from Calryx and more from the bond between us, fire-forged and storm-fed. She gives it freely, without hesitation.
The bond between Thane and me pulls tight with fear.
“Amara!” His voice crashes through my mind, filled with panic and desperation.
But I cannot answer. The power moving through me has become something vast and unstoppable. It surges beyond the fog, beyond the Commander’s magics, beyond anything standing in its way.
Then it breaks free.
Threads of light twist into being, fine as silk and blinding in their purity.
They weave around my arms, my chest, and my hands, each one a strand of Elemental power.
Wind coils like silver mist, gathering strength as it circles.
Fire sparks at my fingertips, golden and alive.
Water streams through the air in translucent ribbons, while lines of earth-glow pulse faintly beneath my boots, sure and unyielding.
The Elements spiral around me, braiding into one another with a precision that feels almost sacred. The fog thrashes against its impending unraveling, but my power does not falter. It pours through me in a relentless current.
Panting with the effort, I raise my hand.
The wind answers.
It rises from every direction at once, gathering above us before plunging downward in a violent rush. The force tears across the battlefield, ripping through the fog and scattering the shadow magics in long, ragged tendrils.
For a single breath, the darkness fights to hold together.
Then the storm tears it apart.
The battlefield below is revealed.
What we see makes my stomach drop.
Fellborn swarm the southern edge of the keep, climbing the inner wall as clawed hands tear into stone. A second wave waits behind them, teeth bared and eyes glowing, shadow magics pulsing at their cores like living voids.
At the center of it all stands a figure clad in dark armor, motionless amid the chaos.
Watching.
The Commander.
Thane’s growl rolls through the bond. “There.”
My muscles ache from the effort of clearing the fog. Something warm runs from my nose, and when I glance down, I see red droplets splattered across my gloved hand. I wipe the blood away on my sleeve.
There is no time to think about or recover from the cost of what I just did—the warning comes through the dragons first. A sharp, collective cry tears through the sky and slams into the mind of every rider.
The dragons sense them before we can.
“Kethraki! Four dozen at least. Flying fast. Coming straight for the formation!” Calryx shouts.
I twist in my saddle, searching the sky ahead. Several other riders around me do the same. A few heartbeats later, I see them.
Dark shapes tear through the smoke and cloud, twisted winged beasts moving with terrifying speed. Their forms are jagged and wrong, their jaws stretched too wide, their talons gleaming like obsidian.
Thane’s hand goes up, sharp and immediate.
Disband.
The formation breaks.
Like lightning splitting the sky, dragons veer into flanking positions, peeling away into strike clusters as instinct and training take over.
“Get ready, Virelya!” Calryx’s voice is taut, fire curling at the edges.
She banks hard, keeping tight to Xaroth’s flank as the black dragon climbs for elevation, flames building behind his teeth.
To Thane’s right, Garrick and Ruadhan drop into position. The orange dragon folds one wing and dives, scales flashing like molten copper in the light.
“Now we fight,” Calryx growls.
I tighten my grip on the saddle horn as Elemental wind dances at my fingertips, remnants of the magics still sparking across my skin.
One of the strike units hits first. Three dragons dive as one, screaming toward the oncoming wave of Kethraki. Their roars split the sky just before impact. Then they collide.
Claws rake through shadowed flesh. Teeth tear. Flames erupt mid-air, incinerating a cluster of Kethraki in an instant. One dragon locks its jaws around a beast’s throat and tears it clean, the body spiraling down in a black smear of wings and ash.
The sky is chaos.
More dragons engage, ripping, shredding, and clawing their way through the dark tide. The Kethraki are smaller, barely a third the size of most dragons and no match in raw power, but they are fast. And they’re vicious.
One latches onto a dragon’s wing joint, sinking its talons deep and tearing through the membrane. The rider twists in the saddle to strike it away, but another Kethraki darts in from the flank.
Even from this distance, I see it. One of our dragons falters.
Xaroth moves.
The obsidian dragon tears through the sky like a blade, fire roaring from his throat as he crashes into a cluster of Kethraki.
Two vanish in a burst of flame. A third manages to latch onto Xaroth’s shoulder, but the black dragon barely slows.
It might as well be a pup biting the ear of a warhound.
He spins in midair, dragging the creature with him before tearing it in half and flinging the remains into the open sky.
Even for all their terror, the Kethraki are nothing compared to him.